Susan Werner’s Got Time Between Trains

My initial reaction to Susan Werner’s last album, 1998’s Time Between Trains (Bottom Line), was sharp and decisive: Turn it off! It wasn’t that the album was unlistenable. In fact, after a few “forced” listens, it became one of my favorite CDs of the year well-crafted songs, excellent production and a voice that brushed against my ears like satin against my skin.
    But the sounds coming from the speakers made me want to squirm nevertheless. It was like peeking at someone else’s journal, and hoping not to get caught. The songs were filled with something I couldn’t quite articulate.
    “Discomfort and embarrassment,” the native Iowan said recently via phone from her Chicago office, nailing the words I’d been searching for since the album’s release. “Embarrassment is the great untapped energy of this nation,” she laughed, “especially the Midwest.”
    As a singer-songwriter-instrumentalist, Werner’s strengths are many. What makes her work stand out, though, is her courage as a songwriter. It’s not that her music is “confessional” (a word that has become a euphemism for “self indulgent”), but rather that it is brutally honest, whether it makes her look vulnerable and heartbroken (“Time Between Trains”), disgusted with men (“Bring ’Round the Boat”) or like the product of a geeky childhood (“Sorry About Jesus”).
    Throughout Time Between Trains (her fourth album and most accomplished songwriting effort), Werner vividly captures social awkwardness with such detail it feels like you’re bearing witness to the mishaps. Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than “Old Mistake,” as she encounters an old crush at a party. In a monologue he will never hear, she sings, “And everybody turned to greet me / McGee and all the rest / ’Cept you turned to the TV / Distinctly unimpressed.”
    “It’s walking a fine line between the specific and the universal,” she explains. “It’s hard sometimes to write about a specific problem without getting so specific that there’s nothing for the rest of us. Then there’s the opposite—like the worst of Nashville that doesn’t risk alienating anyone so it has no specifics.” She pauses before adding, “I hate songs that don’t risk specifics.”
    That fine line is one Werner walks beautifully.
    Speaking to editor Marc Woodworth for the book Solo: Women Singer-Songwriters in Their Own Words (Delta), Sarah McLachlan said, “At some point we all need to hear our own thoughts resonating in another person’s words so we can understand that each of us is not alone.”
    I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve found my inner geek in Werner’s music. At times, I’ve passed silently through that party in “Old Mistake,” waited helplessly for a new romance in the title track, and simply wanted to break free of life’s shackles in “Like Bonsai.” Judging by her live shows, I’m not alone.
    “I think what surprises me is how quiet it gets when you do songs like that,” Werner says. “People are like, ‘Did she really say that?’ and they feel revealed.”
    Being “revealed” may be a challenge for the audience, but Werner considers that part of the package. “I don’t think a show should make people feel 100 percent good,” she says.
    All this is not to say that Werner’s music is a perpetual downer. (“Petaluma Afternoons” places you in the middle of a blissful California Sunday, and even the disgust of “Bring ’Round the Boat” is sung with tongue planted firmly in cheek.) It’s just that at its best, Werner’s work isn’t about anything as easy as manipulating your moods and playing on your emotions. It’s about something far more important: reaching out and making you feel understood. And that may very well be the most precious gift an artist can offer.